Trustee June Bug
Jerusha Abbott, the protagonist in Jean Webster's novel Daddy-Long-Legs, draws a trustee and adds some words:
I never talked to a man before (except occasional Trustees, and they don't count). Pardon, Daddy, I don't mean to hurt your feelings when I abuse Trustees. I don't consider that you really belong among them. You just tumbled on to the Board by chance. The Trustee, as such, is fat and pompous and benevolent. He pats one on the head and wears a gold watch chain.The 'Daddy' referred to in the passage above is "Daddy-Long-Legs" - Jerusha's 'pet' name for her benefactor - and let us recall that daddy long legs prey upon June bugs . . . though this fact depends upon allowing a rather expanded population to be covered by the name "daddy long legs," namely, opiliones, an order of arachnids also known as harvestmen that are not true spiders, and pholcidae, a family of spiders also known as cellar spiders.
That looks like a June bug, but is meant to be a portrait of any Trustee except you.
Labels: Literary Criticism
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 4:32 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
I enjoy reading these, but I remain mystified. Not that that is a bad thing.
I am good at mystification.
Jeffery Hodges
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Your incisive blog series on Webster has led me to lose faith in the enterprise of studying literature. Mystified one moment, disillusioned the next...
I intend to spring lit-crit types with their own petard!
Jeffery Hodges
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One of the cool things about progressive postmodern epistemological theories of the social construction of the body is that now everyone is free to determine for themselves if they have a petard!
If they're flatulent, they have a petard.
Jeffery Hodges
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